Another monument to be created in northern California
An aerial tour of the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument just east of the Coachella Valley, California.
Video: See the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument
(This story was updated to add new information.)
President Joe Biden will designate vast, ecologically rich swaths of southern California desert and of northern California woodlands as a pair of new national monuments in a visit to the state early next week, sources tell The Desert Sun.
One will be the Chuckwalla National Monument, encompassing more than 620,000 acres of desert woodlands and washes that provide critical habitat for millions of migrating birds, endangered desert tortoise, iconic chuckwalla lizards and other wildlife. It will stretch from south of Joshua Tree National Park and north of Interstate 10 across a confluence of two ecosystems, where the Mojave Desert meets the Colorado and the Sonoran Desert, a veteran conservationist with direct knowledge of the decision said.
The designation, which will also protect sacred tribal sites used for thousands of years and broaden recreation opportunities for Latino farmworkers and other area residents, was achieved after a deal was struck with major solar industry groups last spring. Biden will visit the eastern Coachella Valley at the doorstep of the monument on Tuesday, a person familiar with planning for the visit who was not authorized to speak on the record confirmed to The Desert Sun.
The White House said Friday that Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit Los Angeles on Monday and the eastern Coachella Valley on Tuesday, but would not confirm the reason.
“We are guardedly optimistic that it will happen,” said Donald Madart, Jr., a councilmember with the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian tribe in eastern Riverside County, which would see portions of its ancestral homelands near the Colorado River protected, including active worship sites and thousands of sacred relics.
He said several new monuments either created or being considered by Biden “all provide us an opportunity to continue religious freedoms of the native people of this land … It’s a lot bigger than just the protection of a landscape for beauty purposes, it is for being able to continue … to practice that religious freedom by going out into the desert and still partaking in ceremonies that have been with us since time immemorial.”
The second new monument will be the 200,000-acre Sáttítla National Monument in northern California near the Oregon border, the person familiar with Biden’s visit confirmed. The designations were first reported by The Washington Post. A spiritual center for the Pit River and Modoc Tribes, the Sattlitla monument footprint also encompasses mountain woodlands, rare meadows and serpentine seeps that are home to rare flowers and wildlife.
Biden has been pushing to cement his environmental legacy before he leaves office, including by protecting public lands and designating hefty federal funds for conservation and maintenance of open space.
President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
By preserving sites of extreme importance to California tribes, Biden will be fulfilling the original intent of the 1906 Antiquities Act. New mining, drilling, renewables and other industrial activity all would be banned.
Passed by Congress and signed into law by then President Teddy Roosevelt in June 1906, the Antiquities Act was the first U.S. law to provide broad legal protection of archeological, cultural and natural resources in an era when looting of tribal lands had become common.
Since then, it has also been used nearly 300 times by U.S. presidents to set aside public lands and protect their archeological resources. Many iconic national parks first were designated as monuments, including Grand Canyon National Park in 1908 and Joshua Tree National Park in 1936. In recent decades many presidents have created new monuments in the closing days of their presidencies, often over loud objections from state leaders and industry officials.
Trump’s first administration sharply reduced the footprint of Bears Ears National Monument, among others, and sought unsuccessfully to sharply modify or eliminate the Antiquities Act. Biden in turn restored Bears Ears and other monuments that shrunk under Trump. With Republican majorities in both houses, he could have more luck in his second term, though scores of national monuments enjoy wide popularity.
“We know for sure that the designation is just the very tip of the iceberg,” said Madart, when asked about what Trump might try to do. “We know that the real work begins after the designation happens, and we’re very, very well prepared to engage with all the other tribes, as well as the coalition involved with getting this Chuckwalla initiative over the finish line.”
Biden’s latest actions will cap a lengthy and broad-based battle to protect the lands. In April, a petition with more than 800,000 signatures supporting the proposed two monuments and others was presented to the White House and unveiled in front of the U.S. Capitol. Members of Congress, led by Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Indio, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California, also a Democrat, and former U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler of California pushed hard but unsuccessfully to pass bipartisan legislation to create the Chuckwalla monument.
Ruiz had no comment on the designations, simply saying in an email, “I’m thrilled to welcome President Biden to (the) Coachella Valley next week. His visit is a testament to the great people of California’s 25th district.”
But in an interview last year with The Desert Sun, Ruiz spoke about his ties to the Chuckwalla area, particularly Painted Canyon in the east Coachella Valley, where he proposed to his wife. He also led Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and others on tours through areas proposed for the designation.
He, like many residents at the edges of the monument, grew up hiking in area slot canyons on the Mecca Hills northeast of the Salton Sea.
Having those lands and far more designated as uninterrupted wilderness in a monument will protect and widen recreational opportunities for working-class and-low-income farmworkers and others in the Coachella Valley and eastern Riverside County, according to environmental justice groups and others.
Scores of area tribal leaders, agencies, environmental justice and conservation groups and area elected officials strongly supported the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla efforts.
Responding to the news reports of Biden’s expected action, Joseph Mirelez, brand-new tribal chairman of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, said in an email, “For thousands of years, the Torres Martinez Desert Indians have called the lands in the Chuckwalla National Monument home. We are happy to see the designation to protect this area that contains thousands of cultural places and objects of vital importance to (our) history and identity.”
Mirelez, who took office on New Year’s Day, said he had not received official confirmation from federal officials. The tribe is one of the nine nations of Cahuilla Indians, which include the first known inhabitants of the Coachella Valley as well as Riverside and San Diego counties and the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountain areas.
Two exceptions to the broad support were the city of Blythe, whose officials said it could interfere with economic development, and the Coachella Valley Water District, which said in a Nov. 15, 2023, letter to Padilla and Butler that the boundaries as drawn could interfere with the agency’s ability to maintain the large Coachella Canal and to construct new facilities to serve future developments. After buffers were included, the agency chose to remain neutral.
Solar industry concessions
There were other concessions made to win presidential approval: To placate major solar companies, 40,000 acres were removed from the original Chuckwalla monument map last spring to steer clear of solar development and transmission zones along Interstate 10. The boundaries were adjusted to avoid and keep a buffer between solar development focus areas identified in the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan.
In an email in April, Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, gave his blessing to the revised plan, saying “Achieving California’s decarbonization goals by 2045 requires rapidly expanding the energy grid to connect solar, wind and other renewables. The Chuckwalla National Monument will protect environmental resources and tribal lands while creating an energy corridor for the electric power lines essential for the state’s clean energy future.”
It is unclear if Biden will approve a related request to expand Joshua Tree National Park, which continues to surge in popularity.
Trip will be Biden’s first reported visit to desert as president
While Biden has visited many regions of the Golden State during his time in office, the visit on Tuesday will mark his first reported trip to the California desert since he was sworn into office in January 2021.
The president’s trip to the valley comes just a few months after Trump held an October campaign rally near Coachella, where he bashed California’s policies and its leading elected officials.
Biden’s visit to the desert also comes nearly a year after his wife, first lady Jill Biden, was the headlining speaker for a private Democratic fundraiser in Rancho Mirage. At the time, in March 2024, Biden was still several months away from announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election in the presidential election.
The March visit marked her second stop in the valley as first lady, after her plane touched down at the Palm Springs International Airport in March 2021. She made that stop just before traveling to visit with military spouses and children based in Twentynine Palms as part of a relaunch of an Obama-era program aiming to support U.S. service members, veterans and their families and caregivers.
Biden’s upcoming visit will be yet another moment in a long history of visits to the valley from commanders-in-chief. Several presidents — both Democrats and Republicans — have vacationed in the valley, dating back to the late former President Dwight Eisenhower, while former President Gerald Ford lived in Rancho Mirage for decades after his presidency until his death in 2006.
Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama stayed at a private Thunderbird home in Rancho Mirage several times, both during and after Obama’s presidency.
It’s not Biden’s first action aimed at environmental conservation around the Coachella Valley. Among other things, his administration allocated $250 million in 2022 to help restore the Salton Sea, California’s largest but dwindling and polluted lake, near the western edge of the new Chuckwalla monument.
Janet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun, and co-authors USA Today Climate Point, a weekly newsletter on climate, energy and the environment.
